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Sunday, August 13, 2006
Ind. Law - More fireworks over fireworks
The Gary Post-Tribune today has a fairly damning story today about the new fireworks law. The story is written by Steve Walsh and headlined: "Fireworks law loopholes alarm area fire officials." Because the Post-Tribune does not archive its stories, here is the entire story:
A new Indiana law has allowed fireworks stores to expand without sprinkler systems they were previously required to have and has left regulators unable to enforce limits on the size of the explosives the stores sell.Regulators have told the Post-Tribune they were overwhelmed by the surge in retailers requesting permits to sell bottle rockets, firecrackers and other explosives and weren’t able to conduct the fire safety inspections they are supposed to do before issuing such permits.
Many, if not most, of the 71 fireworks outlets in Porter and Lake counties received pre-Fourth of July permits without having been inspected for fire safety.
The new law took effect in May, allowing Indiana residents to shoot off most consumer fireworks legally for the first time. The law also created a new permit process for stores selling fireworks in the state.
A Post-Tribune check of permits certified by the state fire marshal in Lake and Porter counties found the state granted permits for many — if not nearly all — retail outlets without the fire inspection required under the new law.
The state fire marshal would document only one inspection for a permit — Midwest Vending on 37th Avenue in Hobart.
“It was an incredibly aggressive timeframe to get this up and running,” said J. Eric Dietz of Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security, which includes the state fire marshal’s office.
The state acknowledged that it has scant records that most firework outlets were inspected before they were given a permit. Dietz said a flaw in either the process or the new law didn’t require stands to send in a copy of a fire inspection with their paperwork — though the law clearly required an inspection.
He stopped short of saying the inspections weren’t completed. After lawmakers and the governor brokered a compromise in April, the state fire marshal held teleconferences with local fire departments and distributed information on the new law.
Dietz said his office believes local fire departments inspected fireworks outlets around Indiana, even though the state has no documentation of local inspections.
“In most cases around the state, we do know (they were inspected), because we worked with local fire departments,” Dietz said.
Few sites actually inspected
Local fire officials disputed Dietz’s claims. In Gary, Chief Fire Inspector Michael Gregory was given the list of state permits for Gary. He said none of them was inspected for the new law. The city has only inspected new outlets when they are referred from the city’s building commission.
The information package available on Homeland Security’s Web site advises local fire officials that “inspections are to be performed only at locations provided to local fire departments by the State Fire Marshal’s Code Enforcement Section.”
In Hammond, Chief Fire Inspector Jim Walsko said his office did not feel empowered to inspect fireworks stands. Located on the border of Chicago and its suburbs, where all fireworks are illegal, Hammond has among the highest number of stands of any Indiana city, with 21 outlets.
Aside from a packet of information, the state fire marshal did not send a list of potential certificates, he said.
“Our hands are pretty well tied,” Walsko said.
Caught on the border with Illinois, Walsko has long battled Indiana’s often ambiguous firework statutes, which allowed stands to proliferate in Hammond. Far from clearing up the problems, the new law opened new loopholes for fireworks dealers, he said.
“It was written for the fireworks industry,” he said.
The law tightens the standards for new firework outlets, setting tougher rules for tents and buildings. New buildings must have sprinkler systems for fire protection and follow many of the same standards as other buildings housing hazardous materials.
Few rules for older sites
For local fire departments, the most controversial part of the new law was a decision by the legislature to grandfather any outlet that began selling fireworks in 2003.
Though the state did not have a clear picture of the number of individual stands operating under the old law, the Department of Homeland Security says most of the stands registered before the Fourth of July were outlets grandfathered under the law, Dietz said.
Existing outlets didn’t have to add sprinklers and other safety features. At the same time, the law allowed those who operated out of the older building to raise the amount of fireworks they kept on hand.
The Post-Tribune found some local firework outlets were given permits to store up to 3,000 pounds of fireworks under the new law, even though the state Fire and Building Commission had turned down their requests to increase their limits from 500 pounds just last year because they did not have sprinkler systems.
The state fire marshal’s office released the 2005 denial of two Krazy Kaplan outlets — one at 1433 Indianapolis Blvd. in Hammond and the other on U.S. 30 in Merrillville. Last year, the fire departments in both communities fought the expansion before the state and won.
Walsko said there were others.
“We turned them down last year. This year they opened bigger than ever,” he said.
The Post-Tribune left phone messages seeking comment at the phone number Krazy Kaplan’s listed on its permit applications; the calls were not returned.
Lack of sprinklers in a warehouse full of consumer fireworks can be every bit as dangerous as it sounds. In 1996, nine people died in Ohio when a customer ignited the stock at one retail outlet. Fires at Boomtown in Merrillville in 2002 and in north Hammond this year spread quickly, and Walsko said that when they happen they are nearly impossible for firefighters to combat.
A spokesman for the Indiana Fireworks Distributors Association said the fireworks industry is not unique, in that lawmakers often exempt existing buildings from new building regulations.
“It happens in every field. If they didn’t, many people would have to close down because it’s so expensive to put these systems into existing buildings,” association spokesman Steve Graves said.
The industry is fighting a perception that fireworks explode when exposed to flame, when they burn like other flammable products, he said.
Will changes be made?
Aside from the absence of inspections, there have been other delays in enforcing the new law. The law required the state Fire and Building Commission to come up with new rules regulating the industry. More than a month after the first holiday under the new fireworks law, those rules have not been proposed, according to Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security.
Several lawmakers and Gov. Mitch Daniels have hinted lawmakers may go back to the drawing board to amend Indiana’s regulations. Some of the changes being recommended include a home rule, which would allow cities or towns to put more restrictive regulations in place.
The law as written did not not establish a cut-off for permits — and the bulk of the applications flooded the state with less than two weeks before the holiday. Homeland Security would recommended a cut-off in the spring.
“We had 200 to 300 applications come in the last week of June,” Dietz said.
But after more than two decades of attempting to work with Indiana’s fireworks laws, Walsko said his experience is lawmakers will not tighten up the existing regulation, no matter what problems arose this year.
“The fireworks industry will not be eager to give back any gains they won this year,” Dietz said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 13, 2006 05:25 PM
Posted to Indiana Law